I, Caesar
S01E02: Augustus
Julius Caesar’s military brilliance forged a new Rome, but it was Augustus’ political genius that made it an empire for the ages. Despite being Caesar’s nephew and adopted heir, Augustus struggled for thirteen years to consolidate power. Finally declared emperor by the Senate, he oversaw a period of growth and prosperity marked by extraordinary artistic achievement and rapid expansion of the empire. I, Caesar chronicles the life and rule of the first true Roman emperor, who boasted that he “found Rome brick and left it marble.”
Overview
Detailing the rise and fall of the Roman Empire, I, Caesar takes a fascinating look at the public and private lives of six key men who ruled ancient Rome: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Nero, Hadrian, Constantine and Justinian. Their careers were made up of bloody battles and tactical bribery, stunning innovation and profound corruption, dazzling rhetoric and vicious back-stabbing – and together they form a picture of the most sophisticated highs and most brutal lows of the Roman Empire’s inception, heyday and decline. Stretching at its peak, from the north of England to southern Egypt and from the west coast of Spain to Syria in the east, the Roman Empire included within its boundaries myriad people, cultures and climates.
